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Vietnamese immigrants in Japan on a skilled worker visa protest over exploitation
About 570,000 Vietnamese live in Japan, many attracted by promises of qualified jobs linked to the Gijinkoku visa. Yet many are employed as trainees and underpaid. In Chiba, 150 workers are suing an agency for unpaid wages. The story puts the spotlight on a murky and abusive recruitment system.
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More than 570,000 Vietnamese immigrants live in Japan, representing the largest foreign community in the country today. However, many complain of exploitation, discrimination and getting paid lower than agreed wages, often via contracts offered by local intermediary agencies.
Protests have intensified, especially over the distorted use of a particular category of visa, the so-called "Gijinkoku", formally intended for highly qualified workers in the technical, scientific or intellectual fields.
This visa, which is also highly coveted because it can open the door to permanent residence, is often used as an expedient to bring foreign workers into the country, but assigning them to tasks that do not correspond to either the required qualifications or the promised economic conditions.
The result is that many Vietnamese, attracted by the possibility of settling in Japan, pay large sums – even up to US$ 7,000 – to obtain this type of document, only to find themselves employed in low-skilled jobs, often as trainees and not as specialised professionals.
The most recent case concerns a class action lawsuit initiated by 150 Vietnamese workers against the Nekusero employment agency, active in Chiba Prefecture, part of the Tokyo metropolitan area.
The workers complain that they were not paid some wages, for a total of 48 million yen (more than US$ 330,000).
The affair also involved the Vietnamese embassy and Toyota's internal control bodies, which had used the agency's services. The latter closed its activities without providing any support to the foreigners left unemployed.
This episode has raised concern in both Japan and Vietnam, bringing to light a distorted recruitment system that risks becoming systemic.
Suffice it to say that, in the last eight years alone, the number of Gijinkoku visa holders rose from 121,000 in 2015 to over 411,000 in 2023.
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15/11/2005
